Despite the imprint of a fine university press and the accoutrements of extended footnotes, a good index, and a developed bibliography, this is not a scholarly work. The author, the Consultant in the Wyles Collection of Lincolniana and Western Americana of the University of California at Santa Barbara, provides an episodic rather than analytical account.
Reminding the reader that geography and historical experience allowed thousands of mining-skilled South Americans, particularly Chileans, to reach California before the gold-seekers from the eastern United States, Monaghan explains the resentment and envy felt by the later arrivals. He thus provides some insights as to the causative factors for the bloody 1849 anti-Chilean riots in California. At the same time, he overlooks the contributions of the South Americans to California mining technology, and he does not treat significantly the economic influences of the gold discoveries. Works by Claudio Véliz and Arnold Bauer are conspicuous by their absence from the author’s bibliography.
Monaghan offers a light, colorful, and brilliantly narrative story. Thus we learn of a ship whose “sails billowed in cumulous curves,” and of a less fortunate vessel who carried “the angel of death in her rigging.” Monaghan’s extended use of contemporary newspapers, his concern for the minutiae of the time, and his willingness to report imagined conversations, enhance his writing style and result in a rich and vivid book. Quarrels between rival Valparaíso newspaper editors, and the elusive roles of rumor, publicity, and propaganda are considered thoroughly.
Never resisting the temptation to develop particular dramatic incidents and anecdotal details, Monaghan almost totally eschews true analysis. His few halting efforts to trace a central theme are awkward and simplistic. For example, when discussing an 1851 uprising in Chile he claims that the mere fact that the insurrectos purchased their supplies with gold dust proved them “to be rotos from California” (p. 225).
If his theme is vague his digressions are sweeping. His extended description of Pizarro’s conquest of Peru can hardly be justified by the premise that the 49ers read Prescott’s history on their voyages around Cape Hom. Other digressions consider the rudeness of gallery “b’hoys” at New York theatres, the poetry of Pablo Neruda, and the reasons why water boys in Santiago so often tumbled from the backs of their mules. Surely such vignettes might have been dropped in favor of more extended analyses of merchants’ efforts to establish grain or trade monopolies.
Intensive use was made of Hernández C.’s Los Chilenos en San Francisco, but most recent monographic work has been overlooked. Awkward translations from Spanish intrude, and thus muy macho is defined as “girl crazy.” The study is enriched by fine photographs and prints, but a few basic line-maps would have been very helpful. The value of the footnotes is lessened greatly by their being included at the end of textual material.
This work would make a pleasant addition to a personal family library. Any book that can describe Vicente Pérez Rosales as a “cowboy d’Artagnan” (p. 55) offers many delightful surprises and insights.
